[Billie Jean King, perhaps more than anyone else…]

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Billie Jean King, perhaps more than anyone else, was the person who turned ladies' tennis into women's tennis.

Over a decade and a half she proved herself the toughest, fittest and most competitive, and led the way for other players to reach new heights of athleticism and riches.

She helped organise what is now known as "player power', , and fought a sometimes solitary battle to equalise the prize money offered to men and women players.

This made her popular with the other younger players who saw professional tennis becoming a passport to a life of comfort-but not to the media who guard over the fictions and prejudices of a society in decay.

There was nothing particularly proletarian about Billie Jean King. Indeed her struggle in tennis reflected the rising tide of the women's movement in the United States, a movement which articulated above all the aspirations of the petty bourgeois.

But she was disliked by the media. She tried too hard. She was not submissive conch. She made mince==*: i :0o many dainty Tude-s sho better fitted Je sai's craving for subIs57= isranbood. The arms soss insed her 52: 011:0:020 ITS 0*= ISEE ETE STATIE =07z =3 SIT IT KEEP = IS IT 300:

METI BEDE, Du Sa DOCT IE LEE I DO set out to damage her in the only way left open, instinctively found a sharp weapon when she announced her pernicious law suit.

It would be nice to report that Mrs King told the media where to put their zoom lenses; that she made a short statement on the pleasures of homosexual relationships and went back to her tennis.

Of course that did not happen. Mrs King is trained to defend against physical spins, loops and cross court smashes, but not to withstand the prurient hypocrisies of frustrated news editors.

She declared the affair had been a mistake' and stressed the strength of her relationship with her husband and her 'normality' The Star, the Sun and the Mirror made her statement their lead story, the Mirror under the headline Billie Jean's Live-in Blonde' ient, ca fried l on an inside- no less rule page under the headline Billie Jean King admits to having had a lesbian affair' The Daily Mail filled a page with a report and pietu s. sensational astate- calling ner ment 3 sion"

All the papers played down reports that Marilyn Barnett had made IRo suicide atiempis in the past seven months and thai ine she b20% D15teTe S:2s i Et 17225080 =: M Aire's success.